One of my biggest gripes about the web is that all too often style gets sacrificed in favour of utility.
"Usability" and "Search Engine Optimisation" always seem to out muscle "coolness" and "panache" in the battle for on-page real estate.
With our Farnborough Air Show 2010 coverage, we're attempting to buck the trend.
Our Head of Design and Production, Alexis Rendell, came up with some awesome visuals trying to put magazine design standards onto our web pages, complete with a "front cover" style page given over completely to beautiful images from this year's biggest air show.
We've got nine pages lovingly (and painstakingly) crafted from 1s and 0s, showcasing everything Farnborough has to offer. The aim is to provide an online air show experience like never before:
Front Cover
News
Video
Blogs
Twitter
Images
iFlight
Static
Flying
I'll talk through a couple, but then leave you to explore the rest in your own time:
The Front Cover
As mentioned above, the design brief was to bring a magazine-esque front cover to the show pages. We've achieved this with a page dedicated to the best images each day at the show generates.
We're pouring over the 1000s of images that come into us each morning for the next fortnight, and cherry-picking six of very best, most impactful shots to front the show each day.
It's an indulgent use of a webpage, but we were so wowed by the original designs that we had to make it happen.
News
On the news page we've reverted to a stylish black background with white text. Fans of Tweetdeck will get our reference point for that.
Listening to feedback, we've included sector-specific news headlines on the news page this year - Air Transport, Biz Av, Defence and Aerospace.
We also know that you love your pictures so there's a thumbnail with each lead story to liven up the page.
iFlight
This is a much-improved way to showcase our deliciously cool iFlight Interactive Magazine.
If you've not seen an issue yet, then make sure you get on the end of the first Farnborough issue (19th July). They really are a bridge between magazine and website, brimming with images, videos, interviews and interactive graphics.
This page currently shows some greyed-out front covers, but those will be replaced with the actually front covers as we publish them. However you can get an idea of what's coming from the teaser text. If you want an email reminder you can sign up here ...
The other pages are equally glorious but best experienced first hand.
Like many aerospace companies, we like to use the major air shows as a launch page for new products and services.
These pages will form a template for future show coverage on Flightglobal, but we welcome any feedback below if you'd like to see any changes implemented.
"Usability" and "Search Engine Optimisation" always seem to out muscle "coolness" and "panache" in the battle for on-page real estate.
With our Farnborough Air Show 2010 coverage, we're attempting to buck the trend.
Our Head of Design and Production, Alexis Rendell, came up with some awesome visuals trying to put magazine design standards onto our web pages, complete with a "front cover" style page given over completely to beautiful images from this year's biggest air show.
We've got nine pages lovingly (and painstakingly) crafted from 1s and 0s, showcasing everything Farnborough has to offer. The aim is to provide an online air show experience like never before:
Front Cover
News
Video
Blogs
Images
iFlight
Static
Flying
I'll talk through a couple, but then leave you to explore the rest in your own time:
The Front Cover
As mentioned above, the design brief was to bring a magazine-esque front cover to the show pages. We've achieved this with a page dedicated to the best images each day at the show generates.
We're pouring over the 1000s of images that come into us each morning for the next fortnight, and cherry-picking six of very best, most impactful shots to front the show each day.
It's an indulgent use of a webpage, but we were so wowed by the original designs that we had to make it happen.
News
On the news page we've reverted to a stylish black background with white text. Fans of Tweetdeck will get our reference point for that.
Listening to feedback, we've included sector-specific news headlines on the news page this year - Air Transport, Biz Av, Defence and Aerospace.
We also know that you love your pictures so there's a thumbnail with each lead story to liven up the page.
iFlight
This is a much-improved way to showcase our deliciously cool iFlight Interactive Magazine.
If you've not seen an issue yet, then make sure you get on the end of the first Farnborough issue (19th July). They really are a bridge between magazine and website, brimming with images, videos, interviews and interactive graphics.
This page currently shows some greyed-out front covers, but those will be replaced with the actually front covers as we publish them. However you can get an idea of what's coming from the teaser text. If you want an email reminder you can sign up here ...
The other pages are equally glorious but best experienced first hand.
Like many aerospace companies, we like to use the major air shows as a launch page for new products and services.
These pages will form a template for future show coverage on Flightglobal, but we welcome any feedback below if you'd like to see any changes implemented.
on October 1, 2010 6:48 AM | Reply
I don't think Bombardier is likely to see an order or even an endorsement Hazy doesn't usually work that way. He's more likely to beat them up first, then place an order, then pump them up. I do think he will announce orders from Boeing and Airbus, though.